Chapter Thirty-One
Lillienne is missing from her room when I return to apologise.
Her bed neatly made, curtains drawn, fire dead in the hearth.
I fold up from the sheets from the floor and place the black book inside their folds before tucking it neatly under the bed.
Standing from any point in the room, it is not possible to detect anything hidden beneath.
Perfect. The letter, I tuck into my dress, so that I can feel the parchment scratching on the skin of my breast and know it remains there.
Safe until Eliaz and I meet to talk. Tracing where the ghost of his touch remains tingling on my wrist, that indescribable feeling surfaces in my stomach again, albeit duller. Softer. No. I won’t. I can’t.
I strangle the feeling, until it is but a mere breath of wind where the flurry of emotion whirred.
I have other things to devote my attention to.
Lillienne will be upset, and rightfully so.
I don’t exactly know what it was that drove me to leave her so abruptly, whether it was adrenaline from the dream, or the letter.
But I had no reason not to tell her. I tell her everything and always have. This should be no exception.
‘Eira, what’s going on?’ Calli swings in the doorway. She looks behind me. ‘Where’s Lillienne?’
I scan her for any signs of jest. Genuine confusion is all I can decipher. ‘I was hoping you would know the answer to that question.’ Calli schools her confusion into reassurance, with a wave of her hand.
‘I bet she just got hungry or something. She can’t have gotten far on those legs, she’s like a newborn calf, only less graceful.
’ But something just doesn’t feel right about that explanation.
Lillienne is curious, fretful at times, and by the Relic is she determined.
But if anything, she is not impatient, nor is she the type to wander around on her own in her nightgown, alone.
‘Lillienne doesn’t eat breakfast.’ A few words that are pretty effective in dismissing Calli’s theory. She takes them in, biting her lip in deep thought.
‘Come, perhaps she decided to return to the library.' She places a hand on my shoulder, pulling me out of the room. As I step foot over the threshold, I look over my shoulder at the neatly smoothed out throw, the fluffed-up pillows and tucked in sheets.
Lillienne, in all the time that I have known her, has never once cared enough to make her bed.
We search every room I already visited earlier in pursuit of Eliaz, growing more and more frantic each time we are met with emptiness, and a severe lack of Lillienne.
We decide to consider Calli’s theory and search the kitchens for her, hoping she was in fact rummaging the pantry or pestering Odette for something other than the gruel she favours for us Reyheni’s.
‘Get out of my kitchen.’ Odette doesn’t even turn from the stove to acknowledge us in the doorway. Steam billows from the bubbling pots, lids clinking as the liquid simmers.
‘Technically, we’re not in your kitchen,’ I say, perhaps too brazen, most likely emboldened by the urgency to find my best friend, to apologise to her. ‘We’re looking for Lillienne. You haven’t happened to see her anywhere, have you?’
The surly woman lifts the lid to a large silver pot, stirring the contents with a stained wooden spoon. ‘Breakfast isn’t ready.’
‘Didn’t you hear her? We can’t find our friend,’ Calli asks, placing a hand on her hip in annoyance.
Odette shrugs. ‘You know, she is rather likeable, the girl.’
I huff, screwing up my face at the back of her head. ‘She’s Reyheni too, and you seem to strongly dislike me for it,’ I say, slightly irritated at how universally agreeable Lillienne’s personality is.
‘Never mind that,’ Calli interjects, ‘or else we’ll be here bickering all day. Did you see her, Odette?’
‘She’s quite the little joker, your friend is. A funny little thing.’
I look to Calli. ‘It’s no use, she won’t tell me anything.’
‘We’ll keep looking, she can’t have gone far.’ Calli gestures to me to follow her into the corridor.
‘And here I was, thinking we were at the beginning of friendship, dear Odette,’ I shout in parting. I swear I hear her laugh as I leave her view.
‘Something doesn’t feel right about this, Calli.’ I jog a little to match her pace.
‘You’re such an over-thinker. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who thinks so much about everything.’
‘She was too weak to walk yesterday morning, forgive me for worrying how she miraculously managed to disappear without any of us noticing.’
Calli exhales, walking a little faster towards the doors that lead out to the rear gardens. Presumably our next point of search for Lillienne.
‘The recovery process of the affliction varies from person to person. Just a few months ago, there was a man who healed fully in only twenty-seven hours. He was such a tall man, I wondered how he could ever walk, purely by how gangly his legs were.’
I am not much reassured, seeing as how unpredictable this affliction has proven to be, for all we know, Lillienne could be the first case of rapid deterioration and a dip in the recovery process.
Upon reaching the tall, mahogany doors to the rear gardens, Calli stops dead, hand hovering with shaking hesitance over the brass handle, appearing to listen with great care, an ear cocked to the door.
I mirror her action, placing an ear to the wood and listening.
Only the lively chirp of conversational birdsong.
The gentle whirr of a morning breeze. Nothing untoward or unusual that I can decipher. ‘What are we waiting f—’
‘Get back.’
Her words startle me still for a few seconds, and she repeats them again when I don’t make any attempts to move, only louder this time. ‘Get back!’
Taking backward steps, I keep my eyes fixed on Calli, who keeps her head down, her chest rising and falling with deep steady breaths.
Unpanicked although her warning to me indicated otherwise.
Coming to a halt when my back meets the wall, I flinch with the intrusion of the chair rail as it juts unexpectedly into my spine.
Calli doesn’t budge. And then it happens, the doors burst open with a clambering of booted feet, Calli rushing free from the doors at just the right second, the wood just a split second away from hitting her directly in the head.
At least a dozen men begin pushing through, dragging mud and dead leaves into the carpet as they charge down the hall, a frantic river of black uniform and dishevelled helmets. Guards.
‘Tell me what is going on,’ Calli demands.
Her voice falls on deaf ears. The men keep moving, shouting indiscernible things to each other, strained voices of panic and duty.
Calli grabs the arm of a passing guard, a smaller man thankfully, who can’t be very long out of adolescence.
He is more confused than angry at her action, almost tripping over his own feet as he doubles back to where she holds his arm.
‘I demand you tell me what on earth is going on? Why all the panic?’
‘Apologies, Miss Daegon, we urgently seek the king. There has been a major influx of reports of affliction cases. All in the towns nearest the Divide.’
My breath catches. Calli and I exchange a concerned glance, eyes wide and unsettled. ‘Again?’ I question the boy. ‘Are we safe to assume from your urgency that the situation has dramatically worsened?’
The young guard nods. ‘If it continues this way, King Eliaz won’t physically be able to take everyone across, and even if he did, we can’t be certain we’d have the means or capacity to sustain such a drastic surge in cases.’
He looks me dead in the eye, as though this next part is aimed solely at me. ‘This system is at risk of collapse if we don’t figure something out soon. And the risk of death increases with every obstacle we encounter on this side of the Divide.’
‘The people of Reyhen will begin to die if affected by the affliction,’ I breathe, unable to fix my attention on anything. The ceiling closes in on me, and the walls blur and warp around me until I lose my balance, lightheaded. Calli jumps forward to catch my arm and steady me.
‘We will find a way, Eira. We always do.’
I shake my head, the strands near my forehead, wet.
Am I sweating? I don’t even feel that hot.
As I bring my hand up to my hair, I find that, right enough, I am drenched.
‘We don’t even know what is causing the affliction.
We can’t even be sure that taking down the Divide will help in the long run. ’
‘We have to try. We have to persist. Or else only the worst will happen, and we won’t be able to say we did our best, that we at least made an attempt to stop it all, to save everyone. Reyheni or Umbrian.’
The guard side-steps away from us, evidently unsure if he is still required here, Calli waves him away without looking up from me.
‘Eliaz can handle this right now, and we will find a solution. All we can do is try our best in the meantime,’ her voice is lower, distorted and stifled, as though she speaks from beneath the surface of a lake, and I am listening from above, on land.
A jolt of heat sparks upwards from my gut, a sickness brought on by an infection of dread that spreads throughout my body, festering where I cannot reach it.
In the spaces where my power should be. Oh gods.
This must be my time, where the affliction finally sinks its rotting teeth into me and drains me dry of immortality.
No, please, not now. Not ever.
I can’t fight the fight for my people with mortality – with no power. My throat swells until my breathing is but a strangled wheeze as it escapes my lips, my lungs screaming out with the strain as I try to push air out and pull oxygen in through a gap that threatens to suffocate me.
Dark spots taint my vision like spilled ink, pooling together in the centre of my sight before oozing outwards, engulfing all until I am left in the darkness.
Calli’s voice still persists, breaking through the barrier of darkness and drowning out the gentle thump thump thump of my pulse in my ear, still gargling and unintelligible, but loud. It only increases in volume until it is just one long shrill scream.
And there, in the dark emptiness of my vision, stands a boy, mouth agape and emitting the sound that I assumed was from Calli, a pleading wail, wetted by his own tears.
I recognise him in an instant, even though he looks older now, a youthful young man, struck with terror. That same blue rag on his head.
Somehow, I am able to run to him, to grab him, hold him. Comfort him. ‘Shhh. It will be alright,’ I coo, my tongue dry with the lie. ‘I will keep you safe.’
The boy does not quieten. ‘He got me. He got me. He got me,’ he repeats over and over into the echoing void of black we stand in.
I grab his face to shush him, his skin smooth and cold, only, when I look into his eyes – they are gone.
His face is gone, devoid of all defining features, a blank, flesh-coloured slate.
His words hit the wall where his mouth should me, muffled, yet desperate still.
I throw myself back from him in horror, clambering for something to steady myself with, but falling through the air instead. Falling for what feels like an eternity, before landing in a crumpled heap in water.
Rocks stab into my flesh, my leg is twisted in a ghastly direction, but no pain comes with the pouring of blood from the gashes on my body, or the limp, fractured bones.
I sit up, the hair raising on my neck as a cold breath exhales from behind me. My heart stills. Petrified.
‘He tried to kill me, Eira,’ a familiar voice echoes out in the darkness. ‘I just wanted to see, it’s all I wanted, to see—’
The sound of a sword unsheathing, the choking of words and gurgling of blood in a throat. Someone, somewhere, is calling my name. Eira. Eira. Eira. Then a thud.
And I can see and hear no more.